


It's Colder Inside Your Head (Together We Go)

by whatsdunisdun



Series: Unrelated Joshler One Shots [2]
Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Arguing, Depression, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Making Out, Making Up, Two beans fighting, Twø angry boys, unnecessary drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 01:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10547982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsdunisdun/pseuds/whatsdunisdun
Summary: Tyler was having a bad day. Josh was too.All it took was one stupid song.ORTwo silly boys fighting over nothing and hurting each other without meaning to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> HUGE THANK YOU TO AO3 USER PENROSEQUARTZ FOR BEING MY BETA FOR THIS!!!  
> Also a big thank you to ao3 user feelsdemandtobefelt13 for (not really) helping. 
> 
> Let me know if you think there are any incorrect representations or if you’re offended by anything in it or anything, and I’ll look into it!! Stay safe y’all!
> 
> Also 1. I use italics too much I’m sorry and 2. THIS IS SO INACCURATE MY BEANS WOULD NEVER FIGHT LIKE THIS THEY’RE TOO PURE IM SORRY ITS NOT REAL AT ALL I PROMISE

Tyler was having an incredibly bad day. 

He’d managed to convince himself everything would be completely fine as soon as Josh got to Tyler’s house. Josh just had a way of making the best out of the worst situations, and he always made Tyler feel dramatically less crap just by _existing_. 

The other thing that always helped Tyler was listening to his favourite songs. However, his phone was dead and of course his fucking charger was broken, so he was forced to make do with the tiny radio that lived in his apartment. Typically, there was _literally nothing good_ on the radio, so Tyler was currently trying not to get the newest stupid and stupidly popular song about drugs/sex/women/all of the above stuck in his head. 

Tyler was sitting at his kitchen table, head in his hands, swapping between humming along to the radio and cursing himself for doing so. Suddenly, a quick knock rang out, and the door opened.  It’d been pouring rain outside all afternoon, and Tyler was glad - everything felt better when the weather matched your mood. It was called pathetic fallacy, or something.

Josh stepped through the doorway, slipping his shoes off at the rack and hanging up his dripping coat, before turning his attention to Tyler, a happy and comforting smile on his face. Tyler straightened out his back and sat up completely, allowing a smile to grace his features for the first time that day. 

“Hey babe! How was your day?” Josh chirped as he walked towards the stool Tyler was perched on. When he reached Tyler, he pecked a quick kiss onto the other boy’s lips, and threw himself onto the stool next to him.

“UggggGGGggghhhhhhHHHhhhh,” Tyler explained articulately, grabbing his own hair with both hands and tugging.

Josh laughed, and leaned over to brush Tyler’s hair back behind his ear.

“Right. Wanna talk about it?” 

“… Nah. I’m just glad you're here. Finally.”

Josh smiled gently back at him, and despite the months the two had spent in each other’s company, Tyler still felt a small army of butterflies start their war dance in his stomach. 

Tyler reached over and grabbed Josh’s hand, running his thumb up and down absentmindedly as he stared off into the distance, letting (some of) his thoughts run wild. They stayed like that, both happy in the comfort of each other’s company, for several minutes. That was, until Josh dramatically pulled his hand out of Tyler’s, his face lighting up with a thought. 

“I almost forgot! I got you something.” He started digging around in the pockets of his jacket, searching. In the fourth pocket he looked in, he finally found it. 

With a grin on his face, he turned back around to look at Tyler - the latter of whom now felt equal parts surprised, excited and _seriously_ concerned. 

“You mentioned your phone charger broke?” Josh started. “That’s shitty, and I can’t be bothered to keep having to make plans in advance because I can’t text you to arrange things. You know me, I’m a lazy little shit."

Josh chuckled, and Tyler grinned, adding “Don’t forget disorganised.”

“Exactly,” Josh agreed, “So I figured, in my lazy and _disorganised_ state, that I’d pop into the mall and grab you a new one”.

Pulling his hand out of his pocket, Josh revealed the contents - a white cord with a plug on the end. Slamming it down onto the bench, he looked up to Tyler with a triumphant look on his face. Tyler laughed loudly and gratefully, noting that he shouldn’t have been worried - perhaps he should have slightly more faith in Josh. 

“Wait… Why didn’t it come in a box?” Tyler asked, turning to Josh with a suspicious look on his face. 

“Uhhh… It did, I just wanted to open so I could… Check that it works,” Josh replied, an odd smile on his face.

“Thank you Josh, you’re the bestest boyfriend in the whole world.” Tyler responded in a baby voice, accompanied by fits of giggles. 

“However,” he started in his normal voice “I call bullshit on this being ‘new’.” When he saw the worried and guilty look on Josh’s face, he quickly followed this up with “I couldn’t care less, don’t worry. I really appreciate it.” Turning to fully face Josh and giving him the most genuine smile he could muster, he leant forward and planted a light kiss on his cheek. Pulling back with an inquisitive look on his face, he asked his boyfriend “Wait… If it’s not new, then where’s it from?”

“Uhh… My mum gave it to me?” Josh attempted.

“Your mum knows what type of phone I have?” Tyler asked, giving his boyfriend a weird look.

Josh paused, before answering. “Fiiiiiine. I asked my mum for it. She has the same type of phone and she had a spare charger. I’m sorry Ty, I really wanted to do something nice for you, but as I said, you know me… lazy and broke as shit.”

“Don’t apologise. It’s a phone charger - as long as it charges my phone, I couldn’t care less where it came from!” Tyler paused, tilting his head to the side and realising what he’d said. 

“That is to say, I couldn't care where you got it from. I do care that it came from you.” Flashing one more smile to the other boy, he stood up abruptly, grabbing the charger and his phone.

“Now let’s charge this motherfucker so I can TURN THE GODDAMN RADIO OFF AND PLAY SOME GOOD MUSIC!”

Josh laughed gently as Tyler plugged his phone into the wall, and while Tyler’s back was turned, the song on the radio changed. 

“OOH!!! I love this song!” Josh exclaimed, turning the radio _all the way up._

_All. The way. Up._

_“Joshua…_ ” Tyler growled, spinning on his heel to face Josh, and narrowing his eyes, completely unable to tell if his boyfriend was being serious or not. He seriously hoped not - Tyler really wasn’t in the mood to be kind and forgiving, and he would go to _war_ in order to stop the horrific music blasting out of the radio.

In response, Josh stood up and began dancing around the room, a grin on his face. He sashayed over to Tyler, mouthing the words, and attempted to grab Tyler’s hands. Tyler shot him a look that very visibly read, “ _I swear to god I will murder you AND your entire family if you don’t stop and turn off that radio. Right. Now.”_

“Tyyyyyyy come on! Just dance with me for one song then we can play your music,” Josh whined playfully.

Normally, Tyler would have considered giving in to Josh’s adorable smile, and joining in with the terrible dancing to the even more terrible song, but he had seriously had a _really bad day_ \- not just because of the actual events of the day, but also because his mental health was rapidly deteriorating, and he was spiralling towards a phase that would probably involve being locked in a dark room for a week and a half until he could bare to face the world again.

He looked up to Josh with a vaguely apologetic look on his face, but his tone was quite the opposite, instead coming out as a bitter accusation. 

“Do you seriously like this song? How does it not make you want to murder every person that had anything to do with creating it?” Tyler tried to bite back his words as he felt the tension in the room rise.

Josh rolled his eyes. “Come on Tyler, give me a break. It’s really not that bad, and it’s just one song. Don’t be so petty.”

As the word ‘petty’ ricocheted around the room, Tyler felt a knife wedge its way into his heart, right on cue, threatening to sharpen and twist, the vague premise of pain hovering over the kitchen the two boys stood in. 

Tyler knew that responding with any kind of malicious intent could start a proper fight - in all the time Tyler and Josh had been together, they’d not had any serious fights. Sure, they’d disagreed on things and had arguments, but nothing had ever covered genuine insults of each other. Tyler knew his actions that afternoon might have seemed ‘petty’ to someone who didn’t understand the situation, but Josh _did_ understand the situation, and maybe that’s why Tyler said what he said. 

“ _I’m_ being petty? So I get to deal with my entire life falling apart all in the span of one day, and all I need to try to cope with this shithole of a day is my music, but of course my phone is dead, so I suffer through the _stupid_ music on the radio, and wait patiently for a chance to listen to anything but Ariana _fucking_ Grande, and when that chance comes you fucking rip it away from me because “ _You like this song”_ and you refuse to acknowledge that my day was harder than yours and you’re trying to force me to deal with this when you _know_ I can’t but _I’m the one being petty????_ ” 

There wasn’t even a pause. Not a single moment for either of them to take a breath, before Josh clapped back. 

Maybe if Josh had instead taken a moment to think about Tyler’s words, and calmed himself down, and tried to avoid getting in a fight, things would have been okay after this. Maybe if Tyler had thought about what he’d said, and realised he didn’t mean for it to be half as cruel, and apologised profusely before things got worse, the two boys could have made up instantly. 

But unfortunately, both of them had been raised to have many unfortunate reflexes that made their anger instantly flare up in threatening situations, and neither of them considered stepping down at this point. Fuelled by Tyler’s words, and possibly by his own somewhat shit day, Josh spat back instantly without thinking. 

“ _Your day was harder than mine?_ How could you possibly know that, when you didn’t even manage to ask me how my day was? You think just because I bounced in here and tried to act happy to help you out, that means my life is perfect? You, _of all people, Tyler_ , should understand that isn’t how it works. You’re always so busy feeling sorry for yourself and seeking my pity that you can’t look past this _huge wall_ you’ve built around yourself into the world where _other people exist!_

And I’m sick of it. So, so, _incredibly_ sick of it. Look at you! Here you are fucking losing it because _I wanted to listen to a song_. Lord knows how many times I’ve sat down and shut my mouth when _you_ wanted to listen to a song, I thought maybe you’d understand in this situation!”

Tyler scoffed at Josh’s words.

“Shitty, overplayed, pop music with the _most_ basic beat possible and _terrible_ lyrics helps you through a hard day the way _my_ music helps _me_? I find that hard to believe. Besides, what could you _possibly_ have in your life that’s causing this much grief? You know I have good reason to believe my day was harder than yours. And god knows, I assumed you’d tell me _without_ me having to ask, if you _really_ wanted me to know if something had gone that terribly wrong. Outside of that, I don’t believe I’m in the wrong to be asking for your support on a day like this - that’s what you’ve _always_ been for me - my relief when I need one! I don’t need to explain it to you for you to understand why my day was terrible, and I needed you, Josh. I fucking _needed you_. But apparently you can’t fathom that, so maybe you should just _leave_.”

“That’s all I am to you? Your ‘relief’ when you have a bad day? Do I mean _nothing else to you?_ I get it now - you just keep me around so I can fix your problems and clean your messes up after you. Here I was thinking that you _actually_ cared about me and - god forbid - my emotions?! You know, those things that you have that _I have too_?! But no, apparently I was wrong - you’re actually just _selfish_. Turns out your mum was right to call you that.”

Tyler froze. Josh had crossed a line, and both boys knew this. Tyler’s expression quickly turned sour, and just before he broke down into tears, he spat out a yell of “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!”, shoving Josh out the door. 

 

* * *

 

It was dark outside by now, and the rain had only gotten worse. Tyler had spent the last 3 hours busying himself with housework, but he didn’t have the emotional capacity to take his phone off the charger and play the music he waited for so long to hear - because that meant having to face the reality of the fight, having to think about the consequences, and he already had _“Your mum was right to call you that”_ echoing around his head on an endless loop. 

That fight with his mum all those months ago had been _bad_. He hadn’t seen his mum since, and honestly if he hadn’t met Josh that night, after he’d broken down and gone to cry in the bar Pete and Patrick ran (“give him a break Pete, he has nowhere else to go!”), who knows _where_ he would be now. 

It’d taken a lot of convincing on Josh’s behalf for Tyler to be able to separate his image of himself from all of those horrid things his mum had called him, but now… Now Tyler didn’t know what to do. 

He'd finished cleaning up the living room which he’d been neglecting for the past few weeks - fast food wrappers and scrunched up balls of paper from late night writing sessions had covered the floor, but they were now all piled into one big trash bag. 

It sounded like the rain had eased off slightly, so with a sigh Tyler grabbed the trash bag and walked to the front door, prepared to brave the stretch of driveway down to his rubbish bin. 

He absolutely did _not_ think about Josh’s raincoat, still hanging off a hook, as he walked out the door. 

That was, until he saw a bundle of soaking wet clothes wrapped around a shivering body sitting on the stairs outside Tyler’s front door that looked suspiciously like-

“Josh?” It wasn’t meant to sound so - so _broken_ , but Tyler had been crying for _hours_ and his voice was apparently not ready to work, so it ended up coming out as a whisper. 

“Tyler?” Josh’s voice was even quieter than Tyler’s, and somehow even more broken. He quickly spun around, his neck craning to look directly at Tyler, and Tyler froze in his tracks, taking in his appearance - the boy was shaking, and his lips were swollen and completely blue. His eyes were red and puffy, his yellow hair was messily stuck all over his face from the rain, and he was clutching his forearms so tightly he had indents from his fingernails all down both arms. He was only wearing a singlet and jeans, but they were so soaked they were probably making him colder rather than keeping him warmer. 

Taking all this in, Tyler became extremely confused. Before he could even utter out the words “What on earth are you doing here in the cold?” or even just “What the fuck, Josh?”, the other boy leapt up quickly, his legs almost collapsing but just managing to hold him upright. Turning to face Tyler completely, and giving him a look of sincere sorrow, he rambled out a broken apology;

“I’m s-sorry. S-so sorry, Tyler. So, so, so, so sorry. I d-don’t know how to express just how sorry I am. I d-didn’t mean it. A-any of it. At all. I’m sorry, T-ty. I r-really am.”

Tyler blinked back the tears that he thought had _finally_ left him alone, and swallowed down a sob.

Once he felt he could keep his voice at least somewhat level, he asked, “How long have you been out here?” 

He wasn’t quite sure he wanted to know. 

“Since - Since you… k-kicked me out...” 

Tyler almost got angry at that wording, but then he reminded himself that _was_ what he’d done.  
And then he realised just how bad it was that Josh had been sitting there, in the pouring rain, for that _whole_ time. It’d been - what? Three, four hours? 

“ _Shit_ , Josh. Shit.”

At that, Josh flinched and looked down, as if he was expecting Tyler to attack him in one way or another. And that, Tyler decided, was the last straw. This had gone on too long. They were both hurting. There was no point dragging it out more. So Tyler swallowed his pride, and realised with a pang of guilt that’s what he should’ve done the moment Josh walked into his house that afternoon. A bad day’s a bad day - not an excuse to ruin the best relationship you’ve ever had, probably ever will have. 

Tyler dropped the trash bag that was still in his hand, and took one small step towards the shivering boy. As tears started rolling down his cheeks, he took one more step, until he and Josh were standing just inches apart. Placing a hand on Josh’s chin as delicately as he could manage, he slowly brought Josh’s head up so that the two were making eye contact once again, and now it was Tyler’s turn to apologise. 

“I’m sorry, Josh.” Josh broke the eye contact as soon as these words left Tyler’s mouth, but Tyler went on, undeterred. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for being ridiculous, for starting a fight when it was so unnecessary. I’m sorry for throwing you out of the house when you did nothing wrong-”

“I said something horrible!” Josh exclaimed, “I shouldn’t have, and you shouldn’t be apologising for-”

“What you said was the truth, Josh. I’m glad you said it.”

“It wasn’t -” Josh interrupted.

“It was.”

Tyler took a deep, shuddering breath, but continued before Josh could get anything else in. 

“I’m sorry that you had to wait out here for so long, but… why did you?”

There was a beat, and Josh took a deep breath before making eye contact with Tyler again, the two of them holding it this time. 

“Because I love you, Tyler. Because I regretted those stupid words as soon as I said them, regretted the whole fight as soon as it was over, and I wasn’t about to walk away from something that means everything to me without at least trying to salvage it. Because this -” he paused, gesturing to his shaking body, and his blue lips, “is a small price to pay if it means you’ll believe me a little bit more when I tell you I’m _sorry_. Because I am, Tyler. And you don’t need to accept that straight away, you don’t need to accept it ever. But if given the opportunity, I’ll do literally anything to prove to you that I mean it when I say it: I’m so, so, so sorry.”

Tyler shut his eyes to process this, and despite himself, he let a small smile slip onto his face. It wasn't all completely better - far from it - but it was something, something that was very slowly getting the two of them back on the track towards being better, and that he could do. 

“Come on, you stupid idiot -” Tyler paused mid sentence when Josh looked at him with a somewhat offended face, and Tyler took a mental note that perhaps they weren’t as close to being better as he thought - apparently their normal humorous insults were still off limits. He let himself go on regardless, in a much softer tone this time. “Let’s get you out of the cold. Do you want me to drive you back home, or do you want to come in and we’ll run you a nice warm bath and I’ll make you hot chocolate?” He phrased it like a question, but they both knew it wasn’t - it was an offer, but not to drive Josh back home. That was simply the escape route. The option that didn’t make it look like kidnapping.

Josh looked surprised, searching Tyler’s face as if looking for a hint to how sincere Tyler was being. “Are - Are you sure?” 

Tyler simply rolled his eyes. Honestly, he didn’t care if they weren’t at the point of humour yet - Tyler without his sarcasm was entirely defenceless. 

“Of course… you stupid idiot.” 

Josh chuckled at that, and Tyler mentally applauded himself. 

Huh. 

Small victories. 

Slipping his hand gently into Josh’s, giving Josh an opportunity to back out, he began to take small steps back towards the door. When Josh squeezed his hand, Tyler gave himself a standing ovation (in his head. Obviously). 

When the two were about a metre away from the door, a small whisper came from right behind Tyler, close enough to make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He spun around quickly, facing his boyfriend.

“And uhhh… T-tyler?” Josh asked quietly.

“…Yeah?” Tyler asked.

Without hesitation, Josh brought his other hand up to rest on the back of Tyler’s neck, and pulled Tyler towards him, gently guiding their lips together. Tyler’s eyes fluttered shut, breathing the moment in with sweet relief, and a sense of appreciation he hadn’t felt for simple moments like these ones in a long time. As the two separated, Josh’s face lit up in a smile, and he muttered out a sentence before Tyler opened the door and dragged them both back into the heated indoors:

“Sorry. My lips were a bit cold.”

**Author's Note:**

> The poor trash ((me)) never got taken out. After all that.  
> ALSO NO SHADE TO ARIANA GRANDE OR HER FANS SORRY ILY ALL
> 
> Let me know what y'all think!!  
> If you guys see any mistakes or don't like anything give me a comment, and if you like something in particular or have particular requests for future content, let me know!!  
> Stay Alive everyone <3
> 
> (Bella thinks end notes are unnecessary and irrelevant... like me)


End file.
